Kotuko-san, not his real name for privacy, demonstrates the true meaning of love. He is a Japanese human-rights lawyer who owns a Tokyo-based law firm. We became friends because we were both high-end adventurers in our youth.

I boasted that I hitchhiked through Europe and North Africa for three years, covering 8,000 kilometres thru 18 countries. Over a glass of Merlot Red [wine], he boasted back that he integrated for two years with Andean tribes who have never seen outsiders before. He crossed the Andes from Peru by foot until he reached the Amazon river basin. When the bottle of Merlot was finished, we were total friends.

← Kotuko-san taught me interesting points of history, like the first wave of Japanese farmers fleeing the wrath of the ‘Hitler’ Meiji, the last Shogun, back in the late 18thcentury. The Japanese farmers put up the first hemp (abaca) plantations in Mindanao and integrated with the Bagobos of Mt. Apo after World War II.

Surprisingly, their descendant nisseis and sanseis (2nd and 3rd generation
mestizos) are everywhere today, numbering about 20,000, their origins invisible to many. He came as a messiah to give these descendants papers to be able to work in Japan.

He was also a messiah for Japayukis who have returned home from Japan. He was angry to discover that these women, with nissei children, were abandoned by their fathers who had Japanese wives. He wanted the fathers, mostly prominent businessmen, to support their abandoned nissei children and wives wallowing in poverty in the Philippines. He had a grand plan.

He traced the addresses of these Japanese fathers in Japan and sent them a simple legal notice to support their families in the Philippines or else a court case would be filed against them through his law firm. They were all in utter panic. A court case would destroy their reputations and businesses and reveal their Japayuki mistresses to their Japanese wives.

Not one court case was filed. All of them surrendered to Kotuko-san like meek lambs bound for slaughter. Today, these ex-Japayukis receive support and their children are now professionals. Thanks to the Japanese messiah, who, today, still obsessed with adventure in his old age, goes around the world on a wheel chair.